After watching some STV's of American and European tf2 I noticed some team appear to use players as a distraction bombing in and being the enemy's focus fire for a few seconds allowing the said team to walk forward and deal damage.

Is this effective in all situations including midfights and what are the advantages and disadvantages of using such a tactic?

hatchet

Basically comes down to looking at risk vs reward and realistically thinking about your chance of success.

Risk vs Reward ? Well you're taking a risk by putting a player in an unfavourable situation, by trying to make him the enemy's focus. What do you want in return (reward?) Depending on the situation, maybe one or more of: a key pick, some good initation damage, allowing the rest of your team to get position, forcing the other teams uber etc ?

e.g Situation:
Granary last. Both teams have even uber and 6 players up. You want to push last.
Often teams will sacrifce soldier(s) and scout(s) to force the enemy medic to pop uber, whilst keeping their own medic/demo (and maybe a soldier) safe inside cp2.

You're taking a risk, in that you're sending in 3 or 4 of your team in to a fight vs 6 and need them to force the uber, otherwise you'll be at a large player disadvantage. The risk is offset by the potential reward that if your suicide run is successful, your demoman+medic (and maybe a soldier) can defend/delay granary 2nd long enough, for your respawners to come back up, and can push with uber advantage.

Chance of success? Helps if you're unpredicatble. Mid for example. If your player bombs on to the other medics head on every single granary rollout, the other team is going to eventually counter it and have a scout waiting to smash him (or they'll change rollout and the medic will be looking for it as well etc). So the chance of you getting away with it should diminish (assuming equally skilled teams).

Specifically (paraphrasing a div1 soldier ) "with granary mid the intent isn't to suicide your secondary". But if you have the opportunity to jump on the opponents half of mid (crates even catwalk) you basically draw major attention to yourself, and hopefully (whilst dealing some damage), may take some heat off your demoman. That's not saying don't "man up" though, if an opportunity presents itself

The opening play on that was from owl6 go vs foxy. SoD opens up with a solo distraction jump down the garage side. The intent for my team was to look at how we could deal with it and what we did wrong (too many people moving to cover in response and we end up clumping in death's corner).

But the intent of that first clip for you is to note that SoD himself doesn't get a kill, but instead allows his demoman to take prime position on the point which goes a long way to winning his team that rollout.

The rest of the clip is just examples of some other jumps which I think of as 'other than default' which you see on granary mainly from a sollys named relic/platinum. Where teams are rolling their soldier/s in to positions other than just the usual close crate or T-crate, or bombing on the medics head. i.e. The one's where soldier's actually rollout from catwalk and go to the other teams crates or catwalk, cause major distractions, they don't always work, but atleast it's part of a plan and "something different".

hatchet

cheers hatchet that explains it quite well, i guess a lot of the time when the roamer does jump, in essence he does create a distraction however it is up to your own team on how they capitalize on that. Sorry to be a pain but do you have any other youtube links on other maps besides granary? im purely interested in other jumps.

hatchet

Do not throw your life away if:
a) Your team cannot capitalise on it OR
b) They are expecting you to do something.

Good example of a) is badlands middle, jumping onto their combo's head. but your team had already lost middle and are falling out so your life is wasted. Instead it would be smarter to stay alive and help from resupply.

Example of b) you are the sole survivor of a mid fight. The enemy team would expect you to be trying to force the uber, if they are competent there is no chance you will be able to dive 1v6 and force it. You either have to suicide really quickly so you can respawn in time for a last defense, or you should fall to last and stay alive so your team doesnt have player AND uber disadvantage when the enemy pushes.

Another example of b) You have done a valley rollout twice on badlands, they now have 2 scouts sitting on crate waiting for you to bomb into them. They are expecting it, and are prepared, it will be a waste of your life to jump crate and you won't achieve anything. Walking underneath or coming in from maintenance are both suitable alternatives where you achieve something but aren't being hard countered from the get-go.

Suiciding for uber advantage (no matter what class you are) can have negative repercussions. If you force their uber at the incorrect time, position, AND die, you could turn it into a 6v5. More often than not, player adv > uber adv. Losing a dm class isn't always worth the uber force - very situational.

inb4 "general idea"

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